Dear LPG

I have to tell you a story to illustrate my point here.  I live alone but reasonably close to two of my three children and, using some of my friends for comparison, I can see that my children who are now in their early sixties and wrapped in their own lives, do make a lot of time for me as they regularly visit and telephone but for all that I have carved out a fairly active life for myself which leaves me with at least one activity per day. 

I have always thought that in the same way that they are busy it is important that I keep myself involved with lots of activity and I feel that I have, and continue to  find a surprising amount of interesting things to do and interesting people to follow those activities with.

I usually try to remind them about what I am doing but every now and then I slip up and this happened recently when I decided on a day trip to the coast having been offered a standby ticket at short notice. 

I did not realise that I boarded that coach having forgotten to mention the trip to any of my children and by the time I got home that evening they were really worried about what could have happened to me.  I do have a mobile phone and it was in my pocket all day but it was only when I was on the return trip that I took a look at the call history and found many missed calls.  I have to admit that I was so engrossed sightseeing on the day that the ringing of my phone had obviously gone undetected.

I was fine but anything could have happened to me and while I felt that the fuss that followed was a bit over the top it occurred to me that I needed to reflect on the days when they were young and went off without letting their parents know.  There were no mobile phones in those days and I am sure that I am not the only one who remembers nights spent in front of the front room window hoping that they will return.

So while I know that we can look after ourselves perhaps we need to remember our nights of anguish and minimise theirs with a quick text or voicemail.

YG, Lee